A recent study indicates that people over the age of 65, who define themselves as Republicans, were most likely to share false news on the media.
Researchers at the Universities of New York and Princeton analyzed joint links with so-called "fake news" sites on Facebook during the 2016 US presidential campaign.
The results revealed that most of those who participated in the counterfeit news were conservative over 65 years of age, seven times more likely than those between the ages of 18 and 29.
Researchers linked their findings to age-related digital literacy, which means that more needs to be done to teach these skills to older citizens or to make their access to social media easier.
"If older people are more likely to share false news than young people, there will be important implications for how we design interventions to curb the spread of counterfeit news," said Andrew Jess, associate professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University.
The difference in numbers between party supporters in the sharing of false news (18 percent of Republicans compared with less than 4 percent of Democrats) does not necessarily reflect a link between political ideology and false news, but the relationship could be the result of counterfeit news in support of the trampe produced Especially during the election campaign.
This belief is confirmed by the nature of the counterfeit articles, most of which came in support of Trump from most of the fake news articles produced during the 2016 campaign.